Essays on Oscar Wilde

“What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.” The first chapter of The Picture of Dorian Gray greatly establishes...

Duplicity, or the art of deceiving, played a huge role in life during the late Victorian period. This idea is reinforced in literature at the time, especially in the novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde and the short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’...

Oscar Wilde asserts “all art is quite useless” as the opening to his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Contrary to this drastic claim, however, Wilde’s ensuing story, a work of art, is immensely useful in painting a moral lesson: an illustration of the...

In “The importance of being earnest” Oscar Wilde portrayed the mixed use of comedy and social satire through the play, he creates absorb situations and characters which cause the response to such situations to be inappropriate. The play portrays different themes and comes at a...

It is not easy to find a novel like The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), one written by Oscar Wilde, a poet and playwright born in Dublin in 1854. The book is considered as a vintage classic of the nineteenth century, full of surprises and...

In the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde responds to criticism of his controversial novel by emphasizing his beliefs in evaluating artistic beauty in the absence of moralistic meaning. “Arts for Arts sake” henceforth became the definitive mantra of aesthetic practices and...

During the summer of 1894, author Oscar Wilde constructed a deceptively flippant play. The play takes place in a rural community, not far from London. While he does reference crucial issues with ties to historical context, the references are often overshadowed by his characters own...